


The Lieutenant

by manypastfrustrations



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Gen, Immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-10 17:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6998050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manypastfrustrations/pseuds/manypastfrustrations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As soon as he walks through the door, she can sense it: he is immortal.</p><p>Or, the one where Henry's the new immortal on the block - not that he realises it, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lieutenant

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! So this isn't actually the story I was originally going to write - I had an idea, but then work and other boring real life things started piling up, and I had to revise it slightly. I know this isn't my finest work, and I apologise, but I hope you like the idea anyway :) happy reading!

As soon as he walks through the door, she can sense it: he is immortal. A relatively young one, granted, but an immortal nonetheless.

Joanna Reece has seen plenty of immortals in her time, and Doctor Henry Morgan is no exception. He has done a good job of blending in, all things considered, but there are still small signs, hints that he is a man out of time. The accent is too old, his movements too calculated, too much like an act. To her trained eye, the man is clearly hiding something, and she thinks she knows what it is.

And then there are his…unusual crime-solving methods. A medical examiner setting fire to colleagues’ hands and attacking murderers on rooftops? Not exactly an average day on the job for most people.

Yes, Doctor Morgan has a secret, and Joanna thinks she knows what it is. She resolves to sit back and watch, to watch for if – and when – he will show himself for what he really is.

 

Joanna can still remember her first death. Millions of years have passed, but she can still recall the terror she felt, being held underwater by a man she had loved. She remembered thrashing around, gasping for air that wasn’t there, feeling her lungs fill up with water until everything went black. The next thing she knew, she was in another part of the river, and the man had disappeared.

It had taken her weeks to work out what had happened. It wasn’t until she was running away from him once again, and had slipped and fallen down a bank only to find herself in the river again, that she realised that something was wrong.

 

It doesn’t take long until her suspicions are raised once again, this time by Henry’s unusual knowledge. How could someone with only a degree in medical science have so much incidental knowledge about local history – not to mention the specifics of the case of Jack the Ripper, for goodness’ sake?

Still, she reserves judgment. The last time she thought she had met another immortal, she turned out to be wrong, and she had failed to save him in time. A man died because of her, and Joanna’s not taking that sort of risk again. She needs a sign.

 

A few months after they first meet, a sign arrives that may as well be neon-lit and flashing. Public indecency charges are a relatively new invention, but Joanna has often found them useful in identifying new immortals.

She uses the excuse to go through Henry’s file, and finds several similar charges dating back quite a while – more than she was expecting, if she’s honest. The man seems to die a lot – that, or he really likes skinny-dipping. At night.

 _Poor guy_ , Joanna thinks when she realises how many times Henry’s died, in the past year alone. Quickly followed by, _he **really** needs to be more careful._

She tries to talk to Henry about the skinny dipping, but as usual, meets only the careful guard he puts up whenever someone begins to pry too deep. He tells her that he is a somnambulist (and who uses that word in this age, really) and that he sleeps naked, nothing more.

Joanna knows that she cannot get him to open up, not yet. So she sighs and sends him on his way, waiting for the right time, the right moment to broach the topic of immortality.

 

Joanna’s not sure exactly when she lost count of how many times she’s died over the many, many years she has had on this earth, although she suspects it was only a few generations after her first death. She counted in generations back then, not in years – they were shorter, and easier to keep track of. Joanna isn’t even sure how old she is – she’s gone into hiding more times than she can remember, which tends to make keeping track of years difficult. All she knows is that she’s the oldest person she knows, which is saying something, given that she’s met quite a few people during her time.

 

And then Henry mentions a stalker, and Joanna’s ears prick up. A series of possibilities run through her head. Who would want to stalk an immortal? Someone who, like her, suspects his immortality? Or another immortal, possibly? Joanna’s only been able to find a handful of them, and she doesn’t think that any of them would want to stalk Henry.

Nonetheless, she tells Henry, “We’re going to catch this son of a bitch.” He looks grateful, but there is something else behind his eyes, telling her that deep down, he doesn’t really believe that this stalker can be caught. This confirms some of Joanna’s suspicions, but makes her worry about just how dangerous this person might be, immortal or otherwise.

They manage to narrow the stalker down to one Clark Walker, a dangerous psychotic who is connected to two murders. He is currently receiving daily therapy sessions, on account of believing himself to be immortal.

It’s a situation Joanna has seen only too often – a new immortal subjected to psychological testing and therapy after telling people about their condition. Fortunately, she has seen the therapy become more therapeutic during recent centuries; but still, it’s never pleasant when people dismiss your identity as false, no matter who you are. For a moment, she regrets that she didn’t have the chance to meet Clark Walker first, to talk with him about being an immortal. The transition can be difficult, and in the past she’s met a range of reactions – confusion, denial, anger, despair, even joy.

(Sometimes, she thinks that she should have booklets printed. ‘Immortality and You: How to Cope When You Can’t Die’)

Then Clark Walker runs away before Henry and Jo can catch him, and Joanna is back at square one. The man knows that authorities are after him, which will make him even more difficult to find.

Fortunately, (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) it turns out that Clark does not need to be found. The next thing Joanna knows, she is being told that Henry’s stalker broke into his home, and they had a fight in the basement laboratory. “Henry killed him,” the detective says, and for a moment, Joanna is confused. If Henry killed Clark, surely he would disappear?

Then it dawns on her that Clark Walker is not, in fact, immortal – just some deluded guy who believed that he was. A guy who is now dead because of that belief. A guy that Henry, a potential immortal, killed.

Joanna is always surprised when, even after all this time, the universe still manages to throw new things at her occasionally.

 

The immortality issue is pushed to the side after the stalker incident. Joanna realises how much of a toll this act has taken on Henry – killing someone for the first time, even in self-defence, is much easier during the act than afterwards.

Joanna has tried to block out the memory of her first killing, but thanks to her insanely good memory, it keeps coming back to haunt her. It’s his face she remembers the most in the most detail – cheeks reddening, eyes bulging, watching her in horror as she squeezed the life out of the man who had killed her.

He hadn’t been a good man, not in the least. He was evil, manipulative, and if she hadn’t done what she had, other people would have been hurt, herself included. He had killed her first, after all. She had had no choice, that’s what she told herself at the time. And at least a thousand times afterwards.

It didn’t help.

She’s spent as long as she can remember trying to atone for that one act, in any way she can. She’s worked to stop other innocent people from being killed, she’s taken revenge for others’ deaths (only recently doing it strictly within the law), but still, it is not enough.

Of course, her whole life has not been defined by that one moment. She had done other things. She has experienced the world, she has loved and lost, she has done all the typical immortal things. But there is a part of her that cannot help wondering whether she truly is a good person. Can a lifetime of good deeds, even one as long as hers, make up for one bad one?

And so Joanna decides to leave the most recent potential immortal alone, at least for the time being.

 

‘The time being’ turns out to be longer than expected, after an incident with Henry’s roommate’s mother. Specifically, her death. Or even more specifically, the discovery of her death, decades after the fact.

Henry’s devastated reaction to the news raises Joanna’s suspicions once again. Living with a seemingly much older man is strange enough in itself, and she has had several theories as to how they are really connected, such as friends from long ago, or even lovers. This latest case, however, leads Joanna to another conclusion – that Abraham’s mother was, in fact, Henry’s wife. This would mean that Abe was Henry’s son, which is strange in itself, given that in Joanna’s experience, no immortal is able to have children of their own (although it’s not for lack of trying by some of them).

There are many possible explanations, of course, and Joanna keeps an open mind, as always. However, this does throw another spanner in her plans of broaching the subject of immortality with Henry.

Shortly afterwards, another murder arrives to keep her occupied – that of a museum worker, involved with a priceless dagger. Henry is acting stranger than ever, which makes Joanna think that the dagger must be linked to him somehow. Could it have been the weapon that murdered him? That would make him older than she had suspected, but Joanna has long since learned not to make too many assumptions when dealing with immortals.

She has heard of other immortals searching for the weapon that killed him, due to some belief that it would be able to somehow kill them permanently. It’s not a superstition Joanna subscribes to – she’s drowned many times since her first death, and she’s still standing. But at least it gives them something to do.

 

After Henry is caught stealing the evidence and almost killing a colleague, Joanna realises that something is coming to a head with Henry’s behaviour. Joanna decides to follow Detective Martinez, who in turn is following Henry to a train station, of all places.

She manages to keep up with Martinez until they reach the platform, where she is swallowed up by the crowd. Joanna stops, and curses her shadowing skills, one of the few she hasn’t been able to improve much over her long lifetime.

It takes several minutes of searching, but before long, she is sure she sees Martinez standing across the room, facing the other direction. Or if not her, then someone who looks a lot like her from the back. Joanna smiles grimly, and makes her way through the crowd, ducking and pushing until she reaches a gap in the crowd. She darts forwards, focused totally on the woman on the other side of the platform, now going through a doorway into a dark room beyond.

She doesn’t even see the train.

 

“I’m not a killer,” Henry Morgan croaks out. “I’m a doctor.”

The other man straightens up and staggers away, and he is left to die alone, as he has done so many times before. This time, however, he knows it could be his last.

Henry can feel himself bleeding out, and he estimates he only has a few seconds left.

When the tunnel of light finally appears, he breathes a sigh of relief – or rather, he tries to, but finds himself unable to breathe. He is once again given the flashes of memories from his life, from the beginning to the very end. A thought occurs to him – what if this is what everybody experiences when they die, and this truly is the end?

A second later, Henry finds that he has never been so thankful to be in a cold river, naked and gasping for breath. It takes him a few moments, but soon he is treading water, and searching the shoreline for Abe. He sees him standing with the car, and raises a hand in greeting, to which Abe replies with an enthusiastic wave.

So far, so predictable, at least in Henry’s experience.

Suddenly, he hears another splashing sound from beside him. For a moment, he thinks that Adam must have died somehow, and had joined him in the river.

The very last thing he expects is to see none other than Lieutenant Reece treading water next to him, also gasping for breath, and also naked.

Joanna looks around, orienting herself, and finds herself face to face with Henry. Realising what has happened, she grimaces.

“Well,”, Joanna says, “this is awkward.”


End file.
